CULTURAL STUDIES, 2017

VOL. 31, NO. 6, 918–940

https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2017.1374428

Fengshui your graffiti: embodied spatial practices in

the ‘city of gambling’
Gehao Zhang
Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macao,
People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT
To date, the academic discussion of graffiti culture in Greater China borrows a
set of theoretical assumptions or preoccupations based on Euro-American
graffiti subculture practices, focusing on the artistic dimensions of graffiti. This
article, based on an ethnography in Macau, tries to re-examine two forms of
local graffiti culture – the one influenced by hip hop culture, the other by the
Chinese writing tradition – and endeavours to analyse the logic of their
different spatial strategies and embodied practices.

KEYWORDS Graffiti; Macau; gesture; embodied practice

Macau as an ethnographic site and method

This article advances a reflection on the materially conditioned and embodied
spatial experience of graffiti. The case study that substantiates such reflection
is provided by an ethnography carried out from 2012 inside a crew of graffiti
creators and some atypical graffiti creators located in Macau, the first and last
European colony in China until being handed over in 1999 as a special admin-
istrative area which is famous as ‘the capital of gambling’. Since the path-
breaking research of the 1970s (Stocker et al. 1972, Ley and Cybriwsky
1974, Wales and Brewer 1976), graffiti has been discussed in sociology, crimi-
nology and, of course, cultural studies. Graffiti can signify: a crisis of urban
management, shifting the political-economic problem into an aesthetic
problem (Austin 2001), or just a moral panic (Kramer 2010); vandalism or
crimes of style (Ferrell and Stewart-Huidobro 1996) in the matrix of control
and resistance (Ferrell 1995); or a subculture that has a strong connection
to hip hop culture (Brewer and Miller 1990, Rahn 2002). It can materialize
resistance with respect to the international politics of the Middle East
(Gould 2014) or the War on Terror in North America (Ferrell et al. 2005); it
also shows masculinity in the ritual of resistance (Macdonald 2001). It can
be a tool of empowerment for the oppressed; on the other side, it can be a

CONTACT Gehao Zhang gehao.zhang@gmail.com

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 CULTURAL STUDIES 919

field for racist, sexist oppression (Rodriguez and Clair 1999). The topic of graf-
fiti might be public but also personal emotion (Nwoye 1993). There are gender
differences of graffiti in content as well as discourse (Cole 1991).
Methodologically speaking, graffiti can be analysed along the discursive
dimension, considering graffiti as text in a specific social and cultural
context (Menis 2002, Lynn and Lea 2005), or even political context (Hanauer
2011). In recent years, with a shift of focus to geospatial politics, it might be
analysed as spatial misuse (Bernardoni 2013) or as the making of space
(Dickinson 2008).
Studies of graffiti in Greater China started in the 1990s in Taiwan, beginning
with the debates about the classification and redefinition of graffiti in the Tai-
wanese context, and then stretching further to include question of strategy
and cultural meaning (陈弘儒 1995, 游舒雅 1999, 章懿琇 2000, 柯志祥
2003, 陈招良 2003, 黄志聪 2006, 黄柏尧 2007, 杨佩烨 2007, 毕恒达 et al.
2008, 毕恒达 2011). The discussion of graffiti in Hong Kong focuses more
on its political intention and potential (Groves 2012, 张赞国 and 高从霖
2012, Pan 2014b, Valjakka 2015d) or on transcultural trends (Valjakka
2015b). Mainland China shows the differences of graffiti culture, where graffiti
can act as artistic interventions with strong connection to avant-garde art
(Marinelli 2004, Caitlin 2010, Cornell 2013, Lu 2015), or instead as part of
the government-sponsored creative economy project (Valjakka 2011, 2015a,
Pan 2014a, Lu 2015).
Frankly speaking, Macau graffiti culture is less prominent than neighbour-
ing cities such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Unlike peer graffiti creators in
Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, the voices of graffiti creators in Macau
have been totally ignored by researchers interested in many other cultural
phenomena. Quantitative social scientists may easily adopt an attitude
towards Macau as a statistical outlier. For critical scholars, Macau might not
be an ideal object of analysis for any cultural studies project because of its
unmentioned impact on Chinese popular culture; thus, the major reason for
Macau as the site of ethnography is not just to put together the last piece
of the academic jigsaw puzzle. Macau itself becomes method for a deep
understanding China, even Greater China. In the last few decades, East
Asian scholars called the ‘China turn in knowledge production’ (甯应斌
2016), ‘China/Asia as method (Mizoguchi 2016)’, ‘China as theory’ (卡维波
2016) to underscore the specificity of China/Asia, and further to construct a
new universality grounded in specific spatio-temporal logics around the
world. In this article, Macau is considered not only as a particular among par-
ticulars, but also a node in the network of Greater China or Chinese
International.
Historically, Macau is the site where the West met the East for the first time
in the Age of Exploration, and it is the only major city in East Asia free from
wars and revolutions over the last four centuries. Politically, Macau enjoys
920 G. ZHANG

the same political status as Hong Kong, as the Special Administrative Region
of the People’s Republic of China. In fact, in the eyes of the Chinese Central
government, it is a model of the ‘one country, two systems’ policy. Economi-
cally, Macau is the biggest gambling centre of the world – an ideal destination
for millions of tourists from Mainland China, but also the largest opportunity
for money laundering in the international neoliberal financial system.
Due to the absence of local entertainment and a creative industry, or
perhaps because of its small size and deadly short distance from Hong Kong,
Macau has long been imagined as clumsy plagiarist of Hong Kong. Even
though Macau has always been the last asylum for the villain in a Jackie
Chan police story, or a black market for internal intelligence in a James Bond
adventure, it has still been ignored if not forgotten on the academic landscape
of cultural studies. Still, this absence may underscore the significance of Macau
as a method as a way to re-examine some clichéd topics in cultural studies.

Tuya or Tuwu: translating graffiti locally

The emerging scholarly discourse on graffiti and street art in Greater China
faces great difficulty in offering definitions. A Taiwanese scholar once
coined a local term, Guifeiti (鬼飞踢), based on the phonetic translation of
graffiti and offered some local meaning (毕恒达 2011), while scholars in
Hong Kong tend to use a vague and all-in-one concept of graffiti (张赞国
and 高从霖 2012). Studies of the graffiti in Mainland China mainly focus on
key cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, while the internationally
renowned contemporary artist Zhang Dali’s work becomes an inevitable
case (Marinelli 2004, Cornell 2013, Lu 2015). This range enforces the ambiguity
of the concept of graffiti.
Valjakka observed how ‘the previous studies discussing graffiti in China
have failed to acknowledge the international discourse on various forms
of graffiti and street art’. She criticized Pan Lu for ‘aiming to provide a
new paradigm without questioning the definitions or understanding of
the key concepts used by the Chinese media and insiders’. To move
‘beyond undefined graffiti’, she offered her ‘not entirely unproblematic dis-
tinction as contemporary graffiti could be used for the new, international
form of graffiti which emerged in East Asia in the late 1980s and in mainland
Chinese in the mid-1990s’ (Valjakka 2015a, p. 358). Although she challenged
the earlier umbrella concept of graffiti and tried to facilitate a shifting
concept to reveal the complexities, she nonetheless emphasized ‘the impor-
tance of the image in the graffiti scene’. Considering the graffiti as artistic
self-expression, Valjakka used the term ‘graffiti image’ to include both
picture and writings, or the term ‘urban art images’ ‘as creative action that
leaves a visible imprint, however short-lived on urban public space’ (Valjakka
2015c, p. 262).
 CULTURAL STUDIES 921

In this article, I will not add more confusion with more terminology but use
the term graffiti with some further local explanation and interpretation. My
explanations and interpretations are based on, but not limited to, the emic
knowledge of local graffiti creators, since they themselves do not always
have incontestable authority to define their works and actions in public
space. While some graffiti creators have strong intentions and even funda-
mentalist zeal to seek the monopoly of their idea of graffiti, others may
have no idea of what is graffiti at all.
Like other social scientists concerned with Chinese issues or issues in China,
graffiti researchers face the risk of using the word ‘China’ or ‘Chinese’. To
define ‘Chinese graffiti or graffiti in China’ politically or culturally may lead
to endless confusion. A typical example is that some Taiwanese graffiti crea-
tors would intentionally avoid using Simplified Chinese Characters to keep a
distance from the idea of ‘China’ (毕恒达 2011, p. 240). In this article, I will
not use the integral concept of Chinese graffiti or graffiti in China, but focus
instead on graffiti in Macau due to my ethnographic experiences. But, I first
need to warn that there may not be such an established idea of Chinese graf-
fiti or graffiti in China at all; the graffiti in major cities such as Beijing or Shang-
hai may not represent the all-in-one concept of Chinese graffiti or graffiti in
China, let alone the even more problematic cases of graffiti in Hong Kong,
Macau, or even Taiwan. However, we also need to notice the fact that the
graffiti creators in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have
quite robust interactions between themselves. They have maintained a
loose community for years, which is now reinforced by the Internet and
social media. In cities in mainland China, there are graffiti made by writers
from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and vice versa.
While some researchers have applied the definitions of ‘urban art image’
and ‘urban spatial politics’, we need to note that graffiti is not just an urban
phenomenon; graffiti in the vast rural areas is even more vivid and versatile.
Sadly, there is a huge lack of scholarly attention to it. Even in the major cities,
graffiti appears frequently in the so-called urban village. Even in a city as tiny
as Macau, there is graffiti located in a small village at the edge of the city.
In the studies of graffiti in mainland China, Vljakka used the concept ‘con-
temporary graffiti’ to distinguish the modern graffiti of the Euro-American
context and, more significantly, to distinguish it from traditional writing and
painting in public. This distinction makes sense in academic discussions and
excludes some public writing practices in Mainland China such as the demoli-
tion signs, chai (拆); advertisements of making of false certificates Banzheng
(办证) and various forms of political propaganda in the public space by
local authorities. Indeed, any of these could meet the broad definition of graf-
fiti in the Euro-American tradition.
Anyhow, this distinction causes new problems. The temporal division
between ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ is not convincing and absolute,
922 G. ZHANG

since there is neither a clear evolution nor an absolute break between the ‘tra-
ditional’ and ‘contemporary’ examples – plus, they coexist in the same public
space at the same time. Those ‘traditional’ graffiti in Vljakka’s definition are
actually based on the standard of Euro-American graffiti, even though those
demolition signs and false certificates advertisements appear no earlier
than the ‘contemporary’ graffiti as defined. They are just different works for
different intentions by different social actors. In some sense, the demolition
sign is even more postmodern than those ‘contemporary graffiti’. The unspo-
ken logic behind this distinction is in fact the artistic and aesthetic intention.
Taiwanese researchers sometime use the totally different categories of ‘social
graffiti’ and ‘popular graffiti’ but follow the same logic (毕恒达 et al. 2008). In
general, studies on graffiti in China and even East Asian cities focus more on
graffiti as an ‘urban art image’ (Valjakka 2015a, 2015c, 2015d) artistic interven-
tion (Lu 2015) or the aestheticizing of public space (Pan 2015). Graffiti without
artistic efforts or aesthetic values will then be labelled either as ‘traditional’ or
as ‘social’ and excluded from the discussion.
The Macau graffiti creators who have a strong self-identity as graffiti crea-
tors used local terms that have some similarities with their counterparts in
Hong Kong and mainland China. The most common one is Penye (喷嘢),
pen is a verb liberally to mean ‘spray’. Mainland graffiti creators use the
same verb, while ye (嘢) is a Cantonese word for ‘thing’. Seemingly, they do
not speak out what they ‘spray’. The term itself offered the graffiti creators
a sense of a subcultural community: they are doing something that needs
no further explanation within the community, though it may remain myster-
ious for outsiders. Sometimes, the English terms ‘graffiti’, ‘tag’ and ‘bubble’
have been directly used, and hybrid terms such as boomgai (Boom街) – lit-
erally meaning to boom the street – have been developed. Significantly,
when the graffiti creators are interviewed by local media, they will use the
Chinese translation for graffiti, Tuya (涂鸦), with a clear distinction from
what they call Tuwu (涂污), meaning to doodle or smear. Generally, graffiti
is accompanied with words like culture or art, to emphasize artistic technique
and intention.
The creators of Tuwu have no concept of graffiti at all, nor any identification
as graffiti creators. They make their Tuwu or graffiti for their own reasons, as I
will show later. Interestingly, the distinction of Tuya and Tuwu parallels the
academic distinction between ‘contemporary graffiti’ vs. ‘traditional graffiti’,
or between ‘social graffiti’ vs. ‘popular graffiti’, for its artistic or aesthetic inten-
tions or value. Sadly, for the outsider to graffiti, the borderline between Tuya
and Tuwu becomes blurred, since the so-called artistic or aesthetic standards
are vaguer. The local press and authorities sometimes follow the narratives of
graffiti creators to distinguish Tuya graffiti and Tuwu graffiti, but other times,
they may just label all the graffiti as Tuwu and retain the word Tuya for the
official propaganda poster and wall painting.
 CULTURAL STUDIES 923

Tuya: learning from a foreign devil

Graffiti or ‘writing on walls’ has a long and varied history in different regions of
the world. The popular joke among Chinese graffiti creators says that the
pioneer of Chinese graffiti creators might be the Monkey King, who peed
and wrote his graffiti in Buddha’s finger as early as 2000 years ago, according
to the famous ancient novel The Journey to the West. In fact, The Chinese trans-
lation for graffiti, Tuya, first appeared in a poem during the Tang Dynasty,
around the sixth century. Ancient poets kept a tradition to write their work
on the walls.
However, academic conceptions of graffiti’s modern manifestation tend to
posit it as creative expression; they typically associate it with and locate it
within disadvantaged communities in the United States inner cities. Quite a
number of authors have traced the rise of graffiti in New York’s subways
and across the city’s neighbourhoods (Chalfant and Prigoff 1987, Stewart
1989), as well as its development and expression in other cities in the
United States (Gastman and Neelon 2010). Following this narrative, the graffiti
in different cities around the world is considered a global urban phenomenon,
or as an expansion of an innovation from the United States to the rest of
world. In Euro-American society, graffiti is one of the elements of hip hop sub-
culture (Rahn 2002), while the graffiti in a global context can be understood as
an inevitable result of a global journey of hip hop culture. Scholars in Hong
Kong and Taiwan explain the emergence of graffiti in their cities in this way
as well (毕恒达 2011, 张赞国 and 高从霖 2012).
This narrative points to a truth widely accepted among Macau Tuya graffiti
creators. They believe that graffiti was introduced to Macau in the 1990s by
Euro-American artists and tourists. The earliest report on graffiti in the local
press appeared on 14th March 1991. Local Tuya graffiti creators will not
conceal the influence of former colonial powers. One of the earliest Macau
graffiti creators, P.IBG, who began his graffiti in 1990s, states:
Drawing is a hobby or interest of many people. However, there are many stan-
dards and regulations in our life. Drawing on paper could not satisfy us anymore,
so we started our graffiti life. I began to play the game of graffiti as young as 13
to 14. I saw some Portuguese using the spray can, I stole a can … I began my can
in the passageway from floor 4 up to the floor 17, not long until all the walls are
full, then I boomed the street … 1

P.IBG and four of his friends formed the first graffiti crew in Macau in 2003
and named it Gantz5. Two of the members immigrated abroad later, and the
remaining members carried on their graffiti careers. Though research (Lach-
mann 1988) shows that most graffiti creators will quit within 8 months,
Gantz5 have continued their career as graffiti creators over 10 years.
Another member of Gantz5, Mcz, traced back the Macau graffiti history to
the late 1990s in a local magazine interview: ‘The embryonic form of graffiti
924 G. ZHANG

emerged in Macau around the handing over. The small circle of subculture
fans struggle to survive. Today, the society is more tolerant of graffiti than
at that time.’ (郑文雅 2015).
A member of Gantz5 told me that his interest in graffiti shifted from skate-
boarding, another important element of hip hop culture. Only after a serous
injury did he quit skateboarding and join the Gantz5. ‘There is no formal
way to learn graffiti. Most of us learn from the Internet, to follow foreign graf-
fiti work.’2
Gantz5 believed that they were influenced by the so-called ‘old school’
graffiti from the United States rather than the Portuguese tradition (such as
the world-famous graffiti artist Vhils). But, when they talked about their
team logo, they showed their Portuguese legacy:
In the beginning we will put Chinese and Portuguese elements in our works. The
logo of our team, we have something Portuguese in it. We use a black rooster,
which is a symbol of victory in Portuguese culture. We also put in an element of
piracy, because Macau used to be the colony of Portugal. Just as the pirate sailed
to find treasure and Macau is the treasure of Portugal, so we use the black
rooster and pirate in our logo.3

Euro-American graffiti creators offered the definition of what graffiti is and

set the criteria for good graffiti. What local Tuya graffiti creators can do now is
make their work look closer to that of their Euro-American idols.
There is no need to criticize, as cultural imperialism, the expansion of the
Euro-American style graffiti into the eastern urban spaces. However, it is
worth noticing how the local Tuya graffiti creators have accepted this
without hesitation. Therefore, the classification of the graffiti styles also
follows the same logic. Halsey and Young (2002) identify four distinct forms
of graffiti: tagging, throw-ups, pieces and slogans. Tagging and pieces (‘mas-
terpiece’) are considered hip hop forms of graffiti, whereby distinctive calligra-
phy, images and colours are used to write signatures or paint murals (Halsey
and Young 2002). Pieces are larger scale and time consuming, often involving
complex graphical design (Dovey 2012). A ‘throw-up’ is similar to a tag, but
often larger and in bubble writing. Slogans cover a range of topics, from poli-
tics to the expression of love. To this list, we could add stickers, posters, sten-
cils and even knitting as new forms of graffiti that have emerged in recent
years. These different forms of graffiti are produced by different individuals
for different reasons, and they may have different impacts on the community
around them (Halsey and Young 2002). Yet, this heterogeneity is rarely
acknowledged, despite its important implications for the likely success of
any graffiti-related strategy (Halsey and Young 2002). Macau Tuya graffiti crea-
tors totally accepted this classification of graffiti styles.
Once, when Gantz5 got a sponsorship form the government to promote
arts education in the community, they offered free courses on spray can
 CULTURAL STUDIES 925

techniques. In the first class, the classroom filled with children and their
parents, all eager to learn to draw cartoons. Sadly, they noticed the famous
local graffiti creator only taught their kids how to write English letters in
screwed ways. Suddenly, the whole room became empty, except for one par-
ticipant-observer of the local graffiti movement.

Valjakka’s research questioned why there is graffiti in China rather than

Chinese graffiti (Valjakka 2011). Macau graffiti creators, much like most of
their peers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China, strongly resist using
Chinese characters in their works. In his research on Taiwan graffiti, Bi asked Tai-
wanese creators why they do not make something in Chinese (毕恒达 2011).
He did not get an answer, since this question seemed too naive and outsi-
der-ish. There are Chinese graffiti creators such as ZATO1, who have made
efforts to invent a new graffiti style based on Chinese characters rather than
Latin letters. When I asked the question about Chinese characters, P.IBG’s
answer was simple and direct: ‘Chinese characters are not real graffiti, even
not graffiti. If you know the history of graffiti, you won’t ask such a silly question.’
This idea apparently came from the rules of New York graffiti style: it is the art of
lettering.

TUWU: graffiti with Chinese characters

Unlike the Tuya graffiti creator, those Tuwu makers who have been excluded
from the category of graffiti creator made their Tuwu graffiti mainly with
926 G. ZHANG

Chinese characters, thus making their work graffiti with Chinese character-
istics. In an overview of graffiti in China, Pan Lu believes that ‘In China,
writing or painting public space has always been linked to a form of represen-
tation of power’ (Pan 2014a). He admits that ‘writing on an open space, or
even on natural landscape, has long been a part of the aesthetic tradition
in the Chinese cultural context’. But, he limited it to the activities of authorities,
‘such as Tizi or inscription on natural landscapes by emperors or political
leaders to add to the charisma of the place rather than destroying it’ (Pan
2014a). In fact, the Chinese literati has the tradition of writing poems on the
open space. The titles of some poems show they were originally ‘graffiti’ on
the walls of temples. This aesthetic tradition of graffiti vanished from the
early modern period.
There is another tradition of writing in public space for the grassroots
rather than for the elite to express their power and tastes: Gaodizhaung (告
地状), or ground petition. Lu Hanchao’s Street Criers: A Cultural History of
Chinese Beggars defined it as a way of begging: it
referred to an appeal written on a piece of paper or a sheet of cotton cloth and
placed in front of the beggar, who usually sat on a sidewalk bowing or kowtow-
ing. Petitions were also written in chalk directly on the sidewalk. (Lu 2015, p. 152)

Many of the petitioners claimed that they came from a family of literati, or else
an intellectual family, their writing often composed in an elegant style with
beautiful calligraphy. In the early modern period in cities like Shanghai,
some petitioners even used pidgin English to seize the eyeballs of foreign
communities. The petition stories vary but the theme is the same: ‘the
person came from a decent family but had fallen to the rank of a street
beggar due to a misfortune or a series of misfortunes beyond his or her
control’ (Lu 2015, p. 153). Lu considered the ground petition as a way of
begging, and even today it is still a scene in some Chinese cities. Still, the
ground petition sometimes goes beyond just begging for money. Literally,
Gaodizhuang means to sue on the ground or redress an injustice on the
ground. If someone could not achieve justice in court, he/she would turn to
this ritual of appealing to the unseen gods who lived in the celestial realm,
and also to the ancestors buried in the earth, since the written text had the
magic to communicate with supernatural forces. The petitioners’ piousness
would touch whatever gods or ancestors he/she could, and he/she would
regain justice with the help of these supernatural forces. The cult of the
Chinese characters in the Chinese tradition guaranteed the validity of the
ground petition. Since the Chinese characters are the heritage of ancient
sages such as Confucius, their sanctity granted the writings on the ground
and on other public spaces the power to mete out justice. Of course, the
ground petition is also rather practical. While the petitioners speak to
unseen gods or ancestors, the public also witnesses his/her mischief and
 CULTURAL STUDIES 927

his/her pious endeavours. Public opinion can then weigh on the authority
who incited his/her mischief in the first place. In a society without a developed
tradition of social activism, Gaodizhuang becomes an important alternative.
For those who repeatedly wrote down their petitions on the unauthorized
urban public space, it becomes graffiti. Some observers have even pointed
out that the world-renowned Tsang Tsou Cho’s graffiti is actually a kind of
Gaodizhuang (毕恒达 2011).
Tsang was known as the King of Kowloon (more precisely, he should be
Emperor of Kowloon, according to his Chinese), claiming ownership of the
area after covering it for many years with his calligraphy graffiti. Tsang was
born in Guangdong province, China. He moved to Hong Kong at age 16. He
began to mark the streets of Hong Kong with his distinctive graffiti at age
35. In his graffiti, he claimed that he had studied his ancestral tree and discov-
ered that most of the land of Kowloon belonged to his ancestors. He covered
the streets of Hong Kong with his graffiti, since then using Chinese writing
brush and ink as ‘heir to an imaginary birth right that fueled a lifetime of artis-
tic output’ (Han and Ou 2014). Although only of one of his works is officially
preserved in Hong Kong as an artistic masterpiece, his signature style was
written into the collective memory of a generation in Hong Kong and inspired
local artists as an enduring legacy. Dying 10 years after the handover of Hong
Kong from Britain to China, Tsing and his graffiti have become a cultural icon
of the city in which he lived.
In his lifetime, Tsing’s work won international exposure in the art world.
His works were included in the 2003 Venice Biennale, and there have
been some attempts to commodify his work. Although some critics consider
Tsing’s work as a kind of calligraphy graffiti (Chung 2011, Han and Ou 2014),
there were disagreements about his works’ artistic and aesthetic value. He
had no intention of creating ‘calligraphy’ work at all. It is hard to say
whether his aesthetic value has been overestimated or not, but the
linkage between Tsing’s work and the ground petition tradition has been
seriously underestimated.
Some critics understand Tsing’s ‘unauthorized’ writing of history on
unauthorized spaces to have re-invoked the Chinese tradition, in which the
emperor’s handwritings were seen as an indispensable, valuable part of the
natural and artificial landscape rather than a defacement of such structures
(Pan 2014b). Tsing’s writing does indeed re-invoke the Chinese tradition of
graffiti, but not as an emperor performing his power. His tradition is that of
the ground petition. Although Tsing claimed for himself the title of
emperor, his main ‘job’ was waste collector.
While for Hong Kong critics, Tsing’s graffiti is unique and unable to be repli-
cated, in Macau, the tradition of ground petition graffiti continues to flourish.
Alongside those Tuya graffiti tags, there are sometime Chinese characters.
Unlike the illegible and short tags, the Chinese characters are orderly and
928 G. ZHANG

lengthy. Most of them are readable and meaningful. Some are religious
inquiry, and some are sad personal experiences.
The most successful bomber of this kind of graffiti is a few hundred char-
acters-long paragraph entitled, ‘Redress an Injustice’. The text varies slightly
depending on location, but always it is written in black Chinese ink. One of
the most complete text reads:
To the Macau Department of Identity Service: I got my Macau Identity card in
1962. When I applied to renew my identity card, I was rejected. I need the ID
card to go to the clinic. I need a witness for my identity application. I have
been working in a fish stall in Hac Sac for over twenty years. Decades of my
life vanished like the mountains fall. Macau Pan Family Association.

The writer, Grandpa Pan as the local press addressed him, is in his eigh-
ties. According to local daily, he was first arrested for graffiti in 2014, while
he tried to write his complaint on a shop wall with a writing brush and
red oil paint. No later than 2015, he began his ground petition graffiti
after the failure to renew his identity card. Different from those Euro-Amer-
ican graffiti followers, Pan’s work looks quite similar to Tsing’s in Hong Kong.
He only uses Chinese characters in his graffiti. He never uses the spray can;
instead, he mainly uses a Chinese writing brush and sometimes, markers.
Most of his graffiti consists of hundreds of words of similar content, albeit
with slight variations. His calligraphy is definitely not artistic but easy to
recognize and understand. While the King of Kowloon claimed his own ter-
ritorial rights through his work, Pan’s graffiti is also significantly symbolic: he
is looking for his identity.
Bowen considers graffiti as ‘the visual residue of a spatialized perform-
ance that speaks to a diverse range of issues from social resistance to enact-
ing identity’ (Bowen 2013). In Grandpa Pan’s case, despite the credibility of
his accounts and the complicated legal issues, the text itself is not only sym-
bolically enacting identity, it is actually talking about his identity. Grandpa
Pan has officially announced the invalidation of his legal identity as a
citizen of Macau, and his reaction has been either to seek the evidence of
his identity or to denounce the bureaucracy in the public space while the
official route is closed. His ground petition aims to prove both his agency
and citizenship but, as far as the institution is concerned, he only proves
himself an illegal invader of the public space, without citizenship. Unlike
Tsing’s graffiti, which invokes the collective memory and identity of Hong
Kong (张赞国 and 高从霖 2012), Grandpa Pan’s petition has almost been
ignored. In the Macau press, he has been nicknamed hand-scratcher with
Hong Kong citizenship. His work has not been considered calligraphy at
all. Tuya graffiti creator Gantz5 also negated Grandpa Pan’s identity as a graf-
fiti creator due to his lack of knowledge of both hip hop subculture and aes-
thetic value, categorizing his work as Tuwu. Grandpa Pan’s identity card issue
 CULTURAL STUDIES 929

might be a single legal case involving complicated individual or social con-

siderations; we have no clue, but Grandpa Pan’s works are to some extent
more significant than those of the Tuya graffiti creator. Pan uses his own per-
sonal and unauthorized writing to question the authority of official insti-
tutions. After failed attempts to seek witness for his identity and after
being detained time and again, Pan’s writing has become even more
ritual than practical. Thus, drawing on the sanctity of the characters, Pan is
appealing to the public and to unseen deities and ancestors. Just like
Tsing, he belongs to the ground petition tradition. Regardless of how they
describe themselves – as a King or as a man who has lost his identity –
they are actually members of an underclass with no social resources. For
them, graffiti writing is not a performance of power but the last straw for
their petitions. Grandpa Pan just lacked the time and opportunity to cano-
nize himself as a great graffiti artist Kowlonon King.

Pan’s is not the only case in Macau. Since 2014, after complicated legal
debates between a landlord, tenants and the government about disputed
land, there appeared across the street anonymous graffiti complaining
about the landlords and government in Macau. There are several examples
of graffiti in Macau streets signed as Life Science Research Association,
written in Chinese ink, as paragraphs calling for Buddhist beliefs and veg-
etarianism, and also denouncing suicide. In cities in Mainland China, similar
graffiti also exists but due to the harsh urban management system, it does
not last long. They are scattered in corners, making them even less noticeable.
While in Macau, Grandpa Pan and his fellow Gaodizhuang maker’s ‘Tuwu’
works seem to appear much more frequently in the streets, the small size
of the city surely amplifies the visual effect.
930 G. ZHANG

The gestures of the graffiti: painting or writing

For the Tuya graffiti creator Gantz5, Grandpa Pan’s work and similar Gaodiz-
huang works are definite Tuwu, a visual pollution. Since Tuya graffiti creator
aesthetics play a pivotal role in the graffiti world, it is rather difficult to
judge the aesthetic value of Tuwu, since there are no well-accepted practical
and universal standards. Outsiders may see hastily composed Chinese charac-
ters appealing for justice and the smudged tag of English letters as the same
thing. Agents within the subculture may instead focus on the skill required to
create the tag in a particular location. In this sense, graffiti points to a meaning
beyond its own being as image. It is not only a verbal or visual text but the
trace of serious embodied movements in relation to the context, and also a
sign of the process that transpired before the end result. The aesthetic inten-
tion is invisible, but the embodied movements are obvious. This is what
Flusser defined as gesture: the ‘movements of the body that express an inten-
tion’. Gantz5 distinguished themselves from Grandpa Pan through their
gesture of graffiti.
Flusser defines gestures as ‘a movement of the body or tool connected
with it, for which there is no sufficient causal explanation’ In his essay on
the gesture of smoking a pipe, Flusser distinguishes gestures by their inten-
tion: ‘Every classification of gestures could be a classification of forms of life:
of gestures toward the world (work), of gestures toward others … ’ For him,
the nature of gesture is not the physiological phenomenon, but a symbolic
and therefore meaningful action. Every important instrument and medium
has its own specific set of gestures. The core of every meaningful human
action consists of the gestures that underlie it.
For Gantz5, Grandpa Pan himself, or any outsider, the gesture of Grandpa
Pan’s graffiti is the gesture of writing. He brings material to a surface to con-
struct forms, as defined by Flusser. His materials are his Chinese writing brush,
ink and marker pen; the surfaces are the walls in the streets of Macau; the
forms he constructed are this Gaodizhuang works. The gesture ‘follows a
specific linearity’ – hundreds of Chinese characters without any calligraphy
skills array in lines on the substation surfaces, forming a readable narrative.
For Grandpa Pan, ‘Writing is a way of thinking’. When he wrote down his
words, he would not think about their artistic value but the structure,
grammar and tone of his narrative.
Thinking expresses itself in a whole range of gesture. But writing with its unique
straight linearity and inherent dialectic between the words of a whispered
language and the message to be expressed, has a special place among
gesture of thinking. (Flusser 2014)

But this writing gesture is a habitual gesture of ‘nearly inborn capacity’,

which is not some expertise needing special training or equipment. Thus,
 CULTURAL STUDIES 931

the intention behind the writing gesture is not artistic at all. The works created
with the writing gesture of course will be excluded from the category of Tuya
graffiti or street art.
For Gantz5 and their fellow Tuya graffiti creator, the situation is much more
complicated. They will apply different gestures for different works. According
to the old school tradition of the New York graffiti creator, graffiti is written on
the wall. The proper title for a graffiti creator is graffiti writer. Therefore, the
gesture of graffiti should be the gesture of writing. However, although
Macau Tuya graffiti creators call themselves writers (after they learned the
knowledge and subculture of Euro-American graffiti culture), they applied a
paradoxical understanding of their gesture based on the material conditions
of their Tuya graffiti creation process.
When they boomed the street with a single marker pen, they obviously
‘wrote’ their tag. The gesture of writing is applied. But the gesture of
writing here is still slightly different from the gesture of Grandpa Pan, since
Pan used a gesture similar to that of his daily life writing. Tuya graffiti creators
wrote in English, wildly, creating unique and meaningful tags with no literal
meaning for outsiders. Their writing is far away from the writing gestures of
daily life.
When Tuya graffiti creators make their throw-ups or pieces, they ‘spray’
their work with a spray can and sometimes use related graffiti protection
equipment, such as gloves and masks. The gesture here is not the gesture
of writing but the gesture of painting – ‘a process in which various bodies
move in some fundamentally obscure way that results in a painting’
(Flusser 2014) The shapes, texture and power of the curves are immanently
linked to the materiality of both the tool and the surface, as well as to the dis-
crete gesture with its intentional and emotional content. Much as Chmie-
lewska defined graffiti as a design gesture (2008), Tuya graffiti creators
demonstrate a totally different set of movements compared to Tuwu graffiti
creators. In making pieces, they waive their shoulder widely rather than
using the wrist; they climb up and down rather than sit or squat in front of
the material. They press the spray can rather than hold a writing brush or
marker pen. They are painting – ‘an openly intentional movement pointing
from the present in the future’ (Flusser 2014).

Fengshui the graffiti

The importance of placement in graffiti culture is repeatedly acknowledged in
studies of the spatial politics of these visual phenomena. Generally, graffiti is
‘painting without permission’ (Rahn 2002). And whether they are a celebration
of existence or a declaration of resistance, studies show that graffiti is actually
site-specific (Kwon 2004, Bengtsen 2013). Valjakka’s studies of graffiti in main-
land China show the reciprocal relationship between ‘urban art images’ and
932 G. ZHANG

their sites, a phenomenon she defines as ‘site-responsiveness’: ‘the selection

of the site itself has an impact on the content and form’. The ‘content is
especially important when analysing the visual dialogues that occur
between images at the same physical site’. Site-responsiveness also includes
‘reference to social, political and/or cultural discourse at local, national and
international levels’ (Valjakka 2015c).
However, because of the specific socio-political and cultural circumstances
in Macau, the forms of visual self-expression in urban public space include not
only the artistic image but also writings. Thus, theoretical approaches or con-
cepts derived from Euro-American contexts, and even the Chinese context,
are not always applicable here. To understand the spatial politics in Macau,
we need to understand the interaction between the embodied practices of
the graffiti creator and the ‘social space’ they produce. The dynamics
between the graffiti works, graffiti creators and public space cannot be under-
stood as simply the specific placement of graffiti images, nor even as the
responsiveness between the graffiti images and the space. Instead, it must
be extended to include the multi-dimensional matrix between the graffiti
works, the spatial location, and the embodied practices of the graffiti creators.
This amounts to, in their own words, ‘the Fengshui (风水) of graffiti’.
Fengshui is a Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing everyone with
the surrounding environment. It is closely linked to Taoism and other tra-
ditions of Oriental mysticism. Fengshui is popular as a folk belief in Macau.
There is no evidence that the graffiti creator are experts in this local knowl-
edge, but interestingly, ‘fengshui’ has been frequently used as a metaphor
by several Tuya graffiti creators to describe the hidden rules of their graffiti cre-
ation process. One of the main reason why the Tuya graffiti creators excluded
the Tuwu graffiti creators is their ignorance of the rules. The Fengshui of graffiti
includes the placement of graffiti and site-specificity or site-responsiveness,
but it also refers to more than these aspects. Besides the spatial politics of
site-specificity or site-responsiveness, and besides the interaction between
the selection of the site and the content and forms of the graffiti, lie the
secrets of this dynamic of Fengshui: to apply different gestures in the different
physical spaces. There are forbidden zones for any graffiti works; there are
halls of fame for masterpieces made with the gesture of painting in caution;
there are streets swarmed with tags created with gestures of writing in a
hurry. Although the Euro-American hip hop subculture encourages the
‘social daring’ of placement, the Fengshui of Macau’s graffiti creators consists
of their own tactics at avoiding punishment, and also of acquiring permission
and even the possibility of being awarded with payment.
Indeed, graffiti on public property is illegal in Macau. There were no special
laws or regulations against graffiti before the hand-over, but graffiti creators
have suffered what they claimed ‘bloody suppression by the Portuguese
polices’. According to the Administrative Regulation No. 28/2004, graffiti
 CULTURAL STUDIES 933

without permission on any public facilities will result in a fine of 600 MOP$,
and graffiti without permission in a park, on public roads or plants in a
public area will result in a fine of 300 MOP$. Interestingly, the police now
have responsibility or enforcement power against graffiti. The Official Provi-
sional Municipal Council of Macau takes responsibility for the facade of all
architecture in Macau. Therefore, unless someone reports graffiti to the
Municipal Council, they will be no prohibition or cleaning of the graffiti.
For the Tuya graffiti creators, the first element of their fengshui of graffiti is a
spatial taboo. A graffiti creator clearly stated it this way: ‘Graffiti is illegal, I
know. I will never spray on the walls of historical value.’4 Another graffiti
creator explained in a more practical way that ‘the graffiti on the walls of his-
torical heritage will soon be covered by the government. I will try to avoid the
trouble, and keep my works longer by spraying in the street away from them’.
In fact, we mashed up the graffiti tags in Macau on Google maps, and over-
laid the coordinates of the tags on top of a tourist map. The tags are all around
the main streets of Macau quite clearly, and the nodes of the tag’s coordinates
become denser as they approach the main tourist sites, but they always keep
a shouting distance from those sites. This is likely because many of the tourist
sites are world historical heritage sites. Another Tuya graffiti creator linked the
active choice of location with the elite status of these sites:
I feel there aren’t a lot of non-approved outdoor locations for graffiti in Macau.
But we’ve all received education after all and we know that there are plenty of
cultural heritage sites and we respect those intellectual properties. That’s why
we do our best to avoid these sites. We pick locations that are deserted, but
interesting.5

This strategy has produced some rewards. In an interview with the local
press, the director of the Culture Bureau of the Macau government praised
the local graffiti creators (of course, he means the Tuya graffiti creators
rather than the Tuwu ones): ‘Some people may have a stereotype that
those who draw graffiti are bad guys. In fact, it is not like that. Local graffiti
creators cherish and protect the local cultural heritage. This is very important.’
Beside those tabooed spaces in the cities, the Tuya graffiti creators demon-
strate only the gesture of writing in the main streets. They wrote their tags
with a marker pen in a hurry on the walls of an electric substation.
Quite a number of researchers have noted how graffiti in China has won
the favour of numerous local governments, which recognize it as a major
symbol for the flourishing of the ‘creative industry’. Pan Lu (2014a) noted
that there are the types of ‘graffiti’ that have been embraced by local govern-
ment officials in their quest to capitalize on the so-called creative industry
(McAuliffe 2012) and to foster processes of urban revitalization and gentrifica-
tion (Zukin and Braslow 2011). In Macau, graffiti shares similar experiences but
in a much more complicated way.
934 G. ZHANG

After booming the street, the graffiti ‘toy’ will be on his way to becoming a
graffiti king. ‘Piece’ instead of ‘throw-up’ becomes the aim to achieve. Since
there is no subway system in as tiny a city as Macau, they cannot make
‘window down’, ‘married couple’ on the trains as do their idols in New York,
and considering the time-consuming task, the street is not a proper choice.
It is common to place graffiti in the abandoned industrial buildings in Euro-
American graffiti culture. Macau’s graffiti creators have learnt from their
foreign idols, but the situation is slightly different. Due to the high population
density in Macau, the industrial buildings are high-rises residing in the resi-
dential area. Since the 1990s, they were abandoned as the main local indus-
tries (clothing, toy-making) shrank. Tuya graffiti creators found their heaven
there. The buildings were empty and spacious with a strong postmodern
sense; the only problem was that they were locked. Anyway, this makes
them even better. Breaking into industrial buildings broke social conventions,
and thus doing so fit the graffiti spirit promoted by the New York graffiti
ancestors. The industrial buildings kept graffiti creators isolated from everyday
life, although they are not far away, geographically, from their neighbour-
hoods. According to the Fengshui of graffiti, those buildings become ideal
sites for practising to create masterpieces. The gesture of painting will be
used freely here. As a graffiti creators admitted in a self-made documentary,
they feel more like artists to spray on the wall of the industrial building, for
no police will disturb their works. The only nuisance is that some building
are also favourites of illegal drug users. The disadvantage is also apparent.
Hidden in such a secret place, the ‘pieces’ painted on the walls are
unknown to most people. They will not increase the fame of the creator in
the graffiti circle, nor will they increase one’s notoriousness among the public.
Since 2002, foreign investment was allowed to enter Macau, which then
entered a fast track towards a new wave of urbanization. New buildings
appeared, old ones were demolished, and in the last decade, the area of
Macau expanded by nearly one-third through land-filling along the coast
line. In the 2000s, construction site fences became the main street scene,
also providing a new continent for the graffiti creators. Since those fences
only exist temporarily, neither the local authority nor the construction con-
tractor cares about the graffiti on the fences due to extra costs to clean
them. There is no permission needed to paint or write there, and there will
be no punishment for putting graffiti on them. On the contrary, the colourful
‘pieces’ and ‘bubbles’ on the fences change the grey and dull fence into an
artistic canvas. The Tuya graffiti creator will apply either the gesture of
writing for a bubble, or a gesture of painting for a much more complex mas-
terpiece. Some local fine artists also joined in the graffiti. One of the notable
example is Cora Si Wun Cheng, who has pasted her paper-cutting works on
the fences since 2007. As a professional artist, Si formed an alliance with
Tuya graffiti creator Gantz5 to defend their works as art, and in 2013, Si
 CULTURAL STUDIES 935

even curated a government-sponsored exhibition: ‘Graffiti, Maze – A Creative

Group Exhibition’. The exhibition included her own works along with Gantz5’s
work and surely excluded Tuwu graffiti creator such as Grandpa Pan.
Compared with the occupation of construction site fences, the occupation
of ‘Graffiti Park’ is an even greater success, although it ended in tragedy.
Around 2006, French artist Niky de Saint Phalle was invited to exhibit her
works in the Macau Arts Museum. One member of Gantz5 who worked as
part time staff in the museum suggested that Niky paint outdoors and
chose a small park located in the ruins of a demolished building. After the
artist’s success, local Tuya graffiti creators continue to paint the walls in the
park. Unlike their works hiding in the old buildings and construction fences,
the graffiti works here are much more artistic. The Tuya graffiti creators
always bring ladders to spray on meters-high walls. Local artist Wong Ka
Long suggested that the government make full use of the park and leave it
as a graffiti-themed park. According to the graffiti creator, they ‘do not
really occupy the park, but the government acquiesces their activities’.6
Within a few years, the park was finally listed on Time-Out as one of the
must-see attractions in Macau. In an interview by a local magazine sponsored
by the government, the president of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Macau, Ung
Vai Meng stated: ‘Graffiti is a way for people to express their emotions’ and,
like other art forms, this can ‘make Macau famous internationally’.
Although Lachmann found that most graffiti creators will quit after an
average of eight months, those who remain have a limited route for develop-
ment, and they face heated competition for commodification (Lachmann
1988). Gantz5 won their fame in the public for their works on the construction
fences. When Gantz5 was in the streets painting construction fences, they
noticed that it was profitable. Local business invited them to paint their
door and walls. Gantz5 opened their own company for design and interior
decoration. In an interview, Mcz told me ‘graffiti won’t make him rich, but
earned him rice and respect’.7 After the 2000s, they got some orders from
the government as well. Some graffiti creators from Mainland China envied
them: ‘For their locality, the local government will hire Gantz5 to paint the
fences of the natural reservation zone. I guess they earned hundreds of thou-
sands for that.’8 Following the government’s acceptance, more non-profit
organizations or commercial institutions invited Gantz5 and a few fellow
Tuya graffiti creators to decorate their wall with graffiti style. In 2014, the
Macao Christian New Life Fellowship Smart Youth Association commissioned
GANTZ 5 to paint the wall of the main entrance of the newest community
youth centre. In addition to the image representing Jesus, which took two
days to complete, the group was invited to give a few painting classes to chil-
dren at the centre. In 2015, they were invited to paint the wall inside a local
major casino. Apparently, Tuya graffiti creators demonstrated their gestures
of painting at ease to prove themselves as street artists.
936 G. ZHANG

After gaining reputation locally and even internationally as graffiti artists,

the creators make full use of their fame. Their ambition ignited again to
spray their ‘pieces’ in the street, which used to be a spatial taboo. A
member of Ganz5 explained in an interview how he successfully realized
the ‘social daring’ as a typical graffiti creator with his high skill of fengshui
of graffiti. He chose some street’s wall full of ugly tags, then brought his full
equipment such as ladder, mask and spray can. He then demonstrated the
gesture of painting a cartoon-style work carefully and professionally. Gener-
ally, he would be considered to work on a government-sponsored creative
industry project aimed at getting rid of those environmentally unfriendly
‘Tuwu’.
Sometimes, when nobody knows whether it is illegal, we will pretend to be legal.
Sometime we will asked for the landlord’s permission. In other cases, we will
show them some documentation which says the government allows us to
paint on the walls for the promotion of creative economy.9

P.IBG seems even braver. Once, he just stepped into a carnival hosted by
the government and took out his spray can to paint on an empty canvas
used for a background wall. His gesture of painting cheated everybody. The
director of the Cultural Bureau even recognized him and said hello to him.
Actually, after that, some governments would invite local Tuya graffiti creators
to spray on blank canvases, calling this cultural activity a ‘graffiti show’.
Tuya graffiti creators are only somewhat luckier than the Gaodizhuang
writers who have been considered creators of visual rubbish – Tuwu hand
scratchers. Generally, they would not be punished when they wrote their peti-
tions hand in hand with the tags of Tuya graffiti creators, if they were not
caught in the act. However, the local press showed that Grandpa Pan has
been arrested for his Tuwu on a world historical heritage site. P.IBG explained:
Those who have been arrested by the police are doing Tuwu, They are not artis-
tic, not professional, and they are just writing in Chinese. And most importantly,
they wrote on historical sites because they know nothing about the fengshui of
graffiti. They are not doing Tuya at all.

Conclusion
If Macau functions as method as well as an ethnographic site for the analysis
of graffiti, this worldwide cultural phenomenon shows some unique local
meaning and some significance beyond the locality. The generation born in
the 1970s learned from the ‘foreign devil’ of hip hop culture graffiti, while
the older generation kept its ground petition-writing tradition. They could
both be defined as graffiti. The self-described Tuya graffiti creators consider
themselves street artists and debase their counterparts as Tuwu for the lack
of artistic intention and aesthetic value. Material conditions and gestures
 CULTURAL STUDIES 937

become the easiest ways of maintaining the identity of artists and also the
easiest way for the former to distinguish themselves from the latter. The
Tuya even invented their spatial strategy as so-called fengshui to perform
different gestures in different spaces in different times. The discovery of the
hidden writing tradition in public space and the particular embodied pro-
cesses of local graffiti culture as Tuya/Tuwu constitute an essential starting
point for a more nuanced comprehension of the many contemporary cultural
phenomena in Macau and Greater China.

Notes
1. Interview, 2014, July 23.
2. Interview, 2013, June 20.
3. Interview, 2014, July 23.
4. Interview, 2014, July 23.
5. Interview, 2014, July 23.
6. Interview, 2013, June 20.
7. Interview, 2014, July 23.
8. Interview, 2013, April, 10.
9. Interview, 2016, June, 10.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Gehao Zhang is assistant professor of Science and Technology at Macau
University. His research interests include media archaeology, digital anthro-
pology and martial arts studies.

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